But in the neighbor analogy we do, that is it is perfectly fine for my neighbor to stare at their walls, less so if they can see through it.
> If I pop my laptop open right now and look at the SSID list I can receive from the dozen houses on my block, am I being rude?
As far as I know I would need to play with my wifi drivers to store all the unencrypted data packets that reach the wifi antenna. I know that I am broadcasting some information about my wifi (at least the name, probably more), but I expect my neighbor not to methodically try and spy on me.
The same way I expect them not to install a security camera pointed at my windows.
I am blasting "radiation" also every time I speak or press a key on my laptop and similarly I expect my neighbor not to install a matrix of super sensitive microphones to record every word I say or try and reconstruct what I am writing from the sound and rythm of my key-presses (it was possible in some research projects I saw some time ago).
In the radio spectra the only difference I see is that it is unreasonable to demand of people that are already using antennas to filter out all unencrypted wifi data. I understand why this might be legal, I still think that google exploited and is clearly on the wrong side of morality regarding storing also the unencrypted payloads.
I think we don't disagree that soft anonymity is an important social concept.
We disagree that radio broadcast fits the soft-anonymity space. It never has in the past and we probably do more harm than good adding it (for starters, we kill the hobby radio industry. We give massive power to the largest owners of radios---broadcast conglomerates---that could start claiming their broadcasts were intended for only their audience and hit people with a cudgel for tuning in. And there's a lot of ugly corner cases where the radio specturm is shared; if my neighbor's broken wifi is stomping all over my signal quality and I record packets to prove it, should I be held liable that I grabbed that data when their radio activity was harming my ability to use my radios?).
We'd be better served by teaching people "What you broadcast with a radio is broadcast. Make decisions about what you broadcast accordingly."
> google exploited and is clearly on the wrong side of morality regarding storing also the unencrypted payloads
It doesn't sound like Google intended to do that, but I think the fact they didn't highlights why it's important people understand the need to not broadcast that which you don't want public; accidental data collection is too easy.
If I flip my router into debug mode because it stops talking to my laptop, I'm going to see the packets of my neighbors. I don't want to see them, and if they don't want me to either, they really ought to stop sending them unencrypted like that.
But in the neighbor analogy we do, that is it is perfectly fine for my neighbor to stare at their walls, less so if they can see through it.
> If I pop my laptop open right now and look at the SSID list I can receive from the dozen houses on my block, am I being rude?
As far as I know I would need to play with my wifi drivers to store all the unencrypted data packets that reach the wifi antenna. I know that I am broadcasting some information about my wifi (at least the name, probably more), but I expect my neighbor not to methodically try and spy on me.
The same way I expect them not to install a security camera pointed at my windows.
I am blasting "radiation" also every time I speak or press a key on my laptop and similarly I expect my neighbor not to install a matrix of super sensitive microphones to record every word I say or try and reconstruct what I am writing from the sound and rythm of my key-presses (it was possible in some research projects I saw some time ago).
In the radio spectra the only difference I see is that it is unreasonable to demand of people that are already using antennas to filter out all unencrypted wifi data. I understand why this might be legal, I still think that google exploited and is clearly on the wrong side of morality regarding storing also the unencrypted payloads.